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Hospital midwives undergoing practical training with a women's health nurse practitioner from the United States...Giving birth in Afghanistan is a dangerous proposition: according to a January, 2006 World Bank report, nearly half of all deaths of women of childbearing age are related to pregnancy and childbirth. An estimated 75 percent of those deaths, according to the report, are preventable...Nearly five years after the fall of the Taliban and its repressive treatment of women, Afghan women are still suffer from some of the worst healthcare indicators for women in the world. According to UNICEF, Afghanistan's maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the world – 1,600 per 100,000 births, compared to 17 per 100,000 in the United States. Children do not fare much better: one in four dies before the age of five. The fertility rate for Afghan women is 6.6, two and a half times the world average. Some 92 percent of women deliver without a trained birth attendant present. ..Improving access to health care, particularly for women and children, is a top priority for the Afghan government and for international healthcare workers in the country. ..Rabia Balkhi Women's Hospital is the second busiest maternity hospital in Kabul, with some 12,000 to 15,000 babies born each year. In 2002, Tommy Thompson, then U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, singled out Rabia Balkhi for American financial aid, later calling it “a critical facility for Afghan women.” The long-term goal is to improve health care for women, and to create an ob-byn training program at the hospital, which will turn out doctors who will be able to help improve the quality of women's health care in other parts of Afghanistan..... (KEYSTONE/VII Photo/Sara Terry)